A fascinating ramble through Maugham's reading and research on the Spanish 'Golden Age' of Cervantes and the picaresque novels. For me reading this threw up knotty questions of truth and trust in authors, on more than one level, as Maugham's reliabillity and that of his sources is both questionable and blurred by layers of interpretation... His reflection on El Greco seems credible and insightful, but his comments on homosexuality then render the foregoing suspect.
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